For the Relief of Unbearable Urges: Stories (5 page)

The Mahmirim rushed back to their cramped flats, the men shedding their gaberdines and ritual fringes, the women folding their frocks and slipping them into drawers. Feitel, his hand shaking, the tears streaming down his face, began to cut at his beard, bit by bit, inch by inch. “Why not in one shot?” his wife, Zahava, asked. “Get it over with.” But he couldn’t. So he trimmed at his beard like a barber, as if putting on finishing touches that never seemed right. Zahava paced the floor, stepping through the clumps of hair and the long, dusty rectangles of sunshine that, relentless, could not be kept from the ghetto. For the first time in her married life Zahava left her kerchief at home, needlessly locking the door behind her.

They returned to the makeshift station to find the students of the Mekyl lugging mattresses and dishes and suitcases so full they leaked sleeves and collars from every seam. One little girl brought along her pet dog, its mangy condition made no
less shocking by the fact that it looked healthier than its mistress. The Mahmirim turned their faces away from this laxity of definition. An earthly edict, even one coming from their abusers, should be translated strictly lest the invaders think that Jews were not pious in their observance.

The Mahmir Rebbe ordered his followers away from that mass of heathens in case—God forbid—one of the Mahmirim, shivering in long underwear and with naked scalp, should be mistaken for a member of that court. They trudged off in their scanty dress, the women feeling no shame, since the call for such immodesty had come from their teacher’s mouth.

Not even the last car of the train was far enough away for the Rebbe. “Come,” he said, pushing through the crowd toward the tunnel that was and was not Chelm.

Though there was a track and a tunnel, and a makeshift station newly constructed by the enemy, none of it was actually part of town. Gronam had seen to this himself when the railroad first laid track along the edge of the woods. He had sworn that the train would not pass through any part of Chelm (swore, he thought, safely—sure it wasn’t an issue). Checking over maps and deeds and squabbling over whether to pace the distances off heel-toe or toe-heel, the Wise Men discovered that the hill through which the workers were tunneling was very much part of Chelm. They panicked, argued, screamed themselves hoarse in a marathon meeting. It was almost midnight when Gronam came up with a plan.

Tapping on doors, whispering into sleep-clogged ears, the Wise Men roused every able body from bed, and together they sneaked down to the site armed with chisels and kitchen knives, screwdrivers and hoes. It was the only time any of them had been, though only by a few feet, outside of Chelm. Taking up bricks destined for tunnel walls, they waited for Gronam’s signal. He
hoo-hoo
ed like an owl and they set to work—etching a longitudinal line around each one. Before
dawn, before the workers returned to find the bricks stacked as they were at quitting time the day before and a fine snow of dust around the site, Gronam made a declaration. The top half of every brick was to be considered theirs, and the bottom half, everything below the line, belonged to the railroad. In this way, when the train would enter the tunnel it would not actually pass through Chelm. They reveled in Gronam’s wisdom, having kept the railroad out of town and also made its residents richer in the bargain—for they were now the proud owners of so many top halves of bricks which they hadn’t had before.

Mendel recalled that morning. He had stood in his nightshirt in the street outside his parents’ home and watched his grandfather—the massive Gronam—being carried back to the square on the shoulders of neighbors and friends. Simple times, he thought. Even the greatest of challenges, the battle against the railroad, all seemed so simple now.

The memory left him light-headed (so grueling was the journey from that morning as a child back to the one that, like a trap, bit into their lives with iron teeth). He stumbled forward into the wedge of Mahmirim, nearly knocking little Yocheved to the ground. He steadied himself and then the girl as they moved slowly forward, forging their way across the current of Jews that swirled, rushed, and finally broke against the hard floors of the cattle cars.

Mendel did not understand how the Rebbe planned to reach the tunnel alive, though he believed they would succeed. The darkness had been getting closer for so long, it seemed only just that it should finally envelop them, pull them into its vacuum—the tunnel ready to swallow them up like so many coins dropped into a pocket.

And that is how it felt to Mendel, like they were falling away from an open hand, plunging, as they broke away from the crowd.

In the moment that two guards passed the entrance to the tunnel in opposite directions, their shepherds straining on their leashes, in the moment when the sniper on the top of the train had his attention turned the other way, in the moment before Mendel followed the Rebbe into the tunnel, Yocheved spotted her uncle Misha and froze. Mendel did not bump into her again, though he would, until his death, wish he had.

Yocheved watched her uncle being shoved, brutalized, beaten into a boxcar, her sweet uncle who would carve her treats out of marzipan: flowers, and fruits, and peacocks whose feathers melted on her tongue.

“Come along, Yocheved,” the Rebbe called from the tunnel without breaking stride. But the darkness was so uninviting and there was Uncle Misha—a car length away—who always had for her a gift.

Her attention was drawn to the sound of a healthy bark, an angry bark, not the type that might have come from the sickly Jewish dog which had already been put down. It was the bark of a dog that drags its master. Yocheved turned to see the beast bolting along the perimeter of the crowd.

Before the dog could reach her and tear the clothes from her skin and the skin from her bones, the sniper on the train put a single bullet through her neck. The bullet left a ruby hole that resembled a charm an immodest girl might wear. Yocheved touched a finger to her throat and turned her gaze toward the sky, wondering from where such a strange gift had come.

Only Mendel looked back at the sound of the shot; the others had learned the lessons of Sodom.

The Mahmirim followed the tracks around a bend where they found, waiting for them, a passenger train. Maybe a second train waited outside every ghetto so that Mahmirim should not
have to ride with Mekylim. The cars were old, a patchwork of relics from the last century. The locomotive in the distance looked too small for the job. Far better still, Mendel felt, than the freight wagons and the chaos they had left on the other side of the tunnel. Mendel was sure that the conductor waited for the next train at the next ghetto to move on with its load. There had never been enough travel or commerce to warrant another track and suddenly there was traffic, so rich was the land with Jews.

“Nu?” the Rebbe said to Mendel. “You are the tallest. Go have a look.”

At each car, Mendel placed his foot on the metal step and pulled himself up with the bar bolted alongside. His hands were huge, befitting his lineage. Gronam’s own were said to have been as broad as a shovel’s head. Mendel’s—somewhat smaller—had always been soft, ungainly but unnoticed. The ghetto changed that. It turned them hard and menacing. There was a moment as he grabbed hold of the bar when the Mahmirim wondered if Mendel would rise up to meet the window or pull the train over on their heads.

Leaning right, peering in, Mendel announced his findings. “Full,” he said. “Full.” Then “Full, again.” Pressed together as one, the Rebbe and his followers moved forward after each response.

On the fourth attempt the car was empty and Mendel pushed open the door. The Mahmirim hurried aboard, still oblivious to their good fortune and completely unaware that it was a gentile train.

On any other transport the Mahmirim wouldn’t have gotten even that far. But this happened to be a train of showmen, entertainers waiting for clear passage to a most important engagement. These were worldly people traveling about during wartime. Very little in the way of oddities could shock them—something in which they took great pride. And, of
course, as Mendel would later find out, there had been until most recently the Romanian and his bear. Because of him—and the bear—those dozing in the last few cars, those who saw the flash of Mendel’s head and the pack of identically clad fools stumbling behind, were actually tickled at the sight. Another lesson in fate for Mendel. The difference between the sniper’s bullet and survival fell somewhere between a little girl’s daydream and a fondness for bears.

The Romanian had been saddled with a runtish secondhand bear that would not dance or step up on a ball or growl with fake ferociousness. Useless from a life of posing with children in front of a slack-shuttered camera, the bear refused to do anything but sit. From this the Romanian concocted a routine. He would dress the bear as a wounded soldier and lug his furry comrade around the stage, setting off firecrackers and spouting political satire. It brought audiences to hysterics. A prize act! From this he came up with others: the fireman, the side-splitting Siamese twins, and—for the benefit of the entertainers themselves—the bride. When the train was chugging slowly up a hill, the Romanian would dress the bear in bridal gown and veil. He’d get off the front car cradling his bride and pretend they’d just missed their honeymoon train to the mountains. The entertainers howled with joy as he ran alongside the tracks crying out for a conductor and tripping over a giant tin pocket watch tied to his waist and dragging behind. A funny man, that Romanian. And strong. A very strong man it takes to run with a bear.

When the Mahmirim appeared at the back of the train, all who saw them remembered their friend. How they all missed his antics after he was taken away. And how the little bear had moped. Like a real person. Yes, it would be good to have a new group of wiseacres. And they turned in their seats, laughing out loud at these shaved-headed fools, these clowns without makeup—no, not clowns, acrobats. They could only be acrobats
in such bland and colorless attire—and so skinny, too. Just the right builds for it. Lithe for the high wire.

In this way, the Mahmirim successfully boarded the train.

They busied themselves with choosing compartments, seeing that Raizel the widow had space to prop up her feet, separating the women from the men, trying to favor husbands and wives and to keep the youngest, Shraga, a boy of eleven, with his mother. In deference to King Saul’s having numbered the people with lambs, the Rebbe, as is the fashion, counted his followers with a verse of Psalms, one word for each person, knowing already that he would fall short without Yocheved. This is the curse that had befallen them. Always one less word.

Mendel, who had once been a Mekyl but overcome by the wisdom of the Mahmirim had joined their small tribe, still hadn’t lost his taste for excessive drink. He found his way to the bar car—well stocked for wartime—without even a pocket, let alone a zloty, with which he might come by some refreshment. Scratching at the wool of his long underwear, he stared at the bottles, listening as they rocked one against the other, tinkling lightly like chimes. He was especially taken with a leaded-crystal decanter. Its smooth single-malt contents rode up and down its inner walls, caressing the glass and teasing Mendel in a way that he considered cruel.

Dismissing the peril to which he was exposing the others, Mendel sought out a benefactor who might sport him a drink. It was in this way—in which only God can turn a selfish act into a miracle—that Mendel initially saved all of their lives.

An expert on the French horn complimented Mendel on the rustic simplicity of his costume and invited him to join her in a drink. It was this tippler who alerted Mendel to the fact that the Mahmirim were assumed to be acrobats. Talking freely, and intermittently cursing the scheduling delays caused
by the endless transports, she told him of the final destinations of those nuisance-causing trains.

“This,” she said, “was told to me by Günter the Magnificent—who was never that magnificent considering that Druckenmüller always outclassed him with both the doves and the rings.” She paused and ordered two brandies. Mendel put his hand out to touch her arm, stopping short of contact.

“If you wouldn’t mind, if it’s not too presumptuous.” He pointed to the decanter, blushing, remembering the Rebbe’s lectures on gluttony.

“Fine choice, fine choice. My pleasure.” She knocked an empty snifter against the deep polished brown of the table (a color so rich it seemed as if the brandy had seeped through her glass and distilled into the table’s surface). Not since the confiscation of the Mekyl Rebbe’s cane had Mendel seen such opulence. “Barman, a scotch as well. Your finest.” The barman served three drinks and the musician poured the extra brandy into her glass. She drank without a word. Mendel toasted her silently and, after the blessing, sipped at his scotch, his first in so very long. He let its smoky flavor rise up and fill his head, hoping that if he drank slowly enough, if he let the scotch rest on his tongue long enough and roll gradually enough down his throat, then maybe he could cure his palate like the oak slats of a cask. Maybe then he could keep the warmth and the comfort with him for however much longer God might deem that they should survive.

“Anyway, Günter came to us directly from a performance for the highest of the high where his beautiful assistant Leine had been told in the powder room by the wife of an official of unmatched feats of magic being performed with the trains. They go away full—packed so tightly that babies are stuffed in over the heads of the passengers when there’s no room for another full grown—and come back empty, as if never before used.”

“And the Jews?” asked Mendel. “What trick is performed with the Jews?”

“Sleight of hand,” she said, splashing the table with her drink and waving her fingers by way of demonstration. “A classic illusion. First they are here, and then they are gone.

“According to the wife of the official, those who witness it faint dead away, overcome by the grand scale of the illusion. For a moment the magician stands, a field of Jews at his feet, then nothing.” She paused for dramatic effect, not unaccustomed to life in the theater. “The train sits empty. The magician stands alone on the platform. Nothing remains but the traditional puff of smoke. This trick he performs, puff after puff, twenty-four hours a day.